Oddly, it took 43 to properly call out 45
George W. Bush’s speech last week at a forum hosted by his eponymous institute might as well have been titled “Dear Donald.” The 43rd president all but called out the current president by name as he lamented the tone and character of today’s political rhetoric.
“Bigotry seems emboldened,” said Bush. “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”
Indeed.
Trump likes to label these theories and fabrications “fake news,” but “fake news” is Trump’s own invention — and his greatest fabrication to date. Now the rallying cry for millions of Trump supporters, “fake news” is a deflection, a decoy floated on the human sea of credulity to distract people from coverage he finds unflattering. The truth is, what Trump says and does is so often unflattering without embellishment that adjectives and adverbs needn’t apply.
One need look no further than last Tuesday when, attempting to comfort the widow of a slain soldier, Trump reportedly couldn’t bother to use the deceased’s name and reminded the grieving woman that her husband had known what he was signing up for, but “it hurts anyway.” You could say that. Or not.
By contrast, Bush’s suffering on behalf of the injured and killed whom he sent into harm’s way as president is apparent in his visage, in the portraits of wounded soldiers he has painted, and in his ongoing work with troops and military families. Such actions don’t alter the pain of a deadly mistake, but they at least indicate a profound empathy that is utterly lacking in the current president.
No stranger to media criticism — crushing criticism — Bush never attacked the fourth estate. He also obviously recognizes that worse than a reporter’s or editor’s error is the undermining of public faith in a free press. Once the government succeeds in eliminating a country’s watchdogs, the government becomes the only source of information. Most people know, or should know, how that ends.
The irony is that the very people who curse the media also tend to curse government overreach.
Trump’s “fake news” charge is very much in the vein of propaganda. He has created a false narrative to clear obstacles — such as questioning reporters or the hindrance of accountability — from his path.
Russians are also very good at this. Recent revelations about fake Twitter accounts tied to Russia through which genuinely fake news was posted and distributed to influence the 2016 election remind us of how vulnerable we are to fake news. Unfortunately, Trump has helped blur the line between propaganda and what is otherwise known simply as news.
Recall that a president’s primary duty, in addition to defending the country, is to protect the Constitution. Yet, in just nine months in office, Trump has done more to challenge the integrity of the First Amendment than any other president in history, including expressing interest in making it easier to sue journalists for libel.
He would never actually push such a measure because Trump smart and knows he’d get nowhere. But he also knows that many among his base don’t know this. No matter. He’s rallied the base with rhetoric and re-enforced the infrastructure of his greatest deception.
In other remarks clearly aimed at Trump, Bush addressed bullying and prejudice in public life that “sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.”
And: “We can’t wish globalization away, any more than we could wish away the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution.”
One needn’t be a sleuth to infer that Bush was speaking to our bully-inchief, as well as to Trumpthe-salesman, who convinced working-class Americans that he would bring back all those jobs lost to globalization. As Bush suggested, globalization is the new age, and the old one isn’t coming back.
A Republican president needed to say these things — and his name wasn’t Trump.